The Lights and the Follies: Africa’s Historical Ecologies of Climate Change and Watersheds (Blue Nile and Zambezi)

James McCann

Chair, Department of Archaeology and Professor of History
Associate Director, African Studies Center
Faculty Fellow, Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future
Boston University

Sub-Saharan Africa in now in the midst of two massive sets of changes in it hydrology. The first consists of the planning and building of hydroelectic/irrigation dam projects on its river systems (the Congo, the Zambezi, the Blue Nile, the Volta, and the While Nile). The second “wave” will be the expected regional and global climate changes that will have distinctive effects on Africa and its hydrologies. Can the past foretell the longer-range future?